Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Apprentice (Into the After #1) by Patricia Thomas

This book didn’t have much in the way of plot. Tari goes
to university as an apprentice. She studies, she learns, she takes exams. Apart
from a bit at the end, this is basically the story

And that’s ok

I kept waiting for one of her fellow students to be
murdered and her having to hunt down the killer

Or another student to be a vicious competitor and she and
her friends would have to get together in a desperate struggle about them,

Or maybe the whole archive would secretly be run by soul stealing aliens

It wasn’t. It was Tari going to school. And that’s ok.

There were no love triangles, no desperate struggle, no
quest to save the world/find the deep dark secret. There wasn’t even a mean
teacher who was trying to make Tari fail for some reason that should have got
them fired from any decent educational facility

And that was ok

Tari has a secret but it’s only really a big thing
towards the end.

And that’s ok

No, really. I know I know, with any other book I would
have screamed at it to get on with some actual plot. I would be frustrated by
the lack of action, by a book where nothing seemed to be actually happening

But I wasn’t. I loved this book – really, the lack of
major epic plot was ok. More than ok. It was so excellent to see a character
just exist. No world defying consequences, no massive issues, no convoluted
drama o love triangles or convoluted dragging out of the plot with lots of
misunderstanding and caricature villains

This was Tari going to the archive to learn. That’s it

And it works because this world is awesome. This book is
one bug info dump – and yes THAT’S OK. It shouldn’t have been. By every rule
out there this book should have annoyed the hell out of me. But I read it all
in one afternoon, not stopping for a second (I was supposed to cook dinner. We
had take away. Which I ate one handed because I didn’t want to stop reading.)
It was one long info dump of a FASCINATING WORLD

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this world
because that is this book because this book is absolutely awesome and the world
building needs to be experienced. The book takes place in the After
(contrasting with The Before – or Earth). The After is a world created from
Earth’s fiction – every time a book is created, read and loved on Earth it
enters the vast Archive. And the characters in that book add to the After’s population.
Each new book can add new streets, new lands – even new cities and countries
and mountain ranges to The After. And the After is vastly diverse –whether a
city is sci-fi

And it’s the job of the Archive to regulate this. To lead
the After, to preserve and study the books, to predict what changes are going
to happen, how each book will affect the world and to see what adaptions they
can make based on the books they have – what technology they can discover, what
they can develop (just because the books contain the technology doesn’t mean it
comes with the technicians to create it) and managing the different regions of
the world – each with their own technology levels, their own magic systems and
everything else from our rich world of fiction

I won’t go into more detail than that because it really
is fascinating and deep and layered and all excellently developed through Tari’s
experiences. It’s really excellent

We also have the ingredients for lots of future stories –
like fictional characters (like Tari) not being considered full people like
their children are. Characters directly from a book don’t have a full life
(like Tari wasn’t written with parents or a childhood) because they’re not
written with full histories or experiences. These lack of experiences mean they’re
considered to not be fully balanced or enriched people – though it could be
down to prejudice as much as anything

There’s also a level of prejudice against “Prosaics”.
With fictional worlds containing so many people with magic, supernatural
abilities et al (and the world building of all of this is so absolutely awesome
and I can’t recommend it enough) people who don’t have any are called Prosaics
and considered much less capable.

This world stands out but I also have to talk about the
relationships with Tari – because they’re awesomely mundane. She has a romance
with a decent guy and they get on well and it works They have some good
teachers who want their pupils to learn and are dedicated and capable. She has
some great friends, some of which are flawed but still very good.
Misunderstandings are brief and dealt with reasonably and sensibly. There are
people she doesn’t like who are… slightly annoying people she didn’t like

I know it sounds dull but it’s so REAL. So human and reasonable
and none of the mind numbing melodrama – these characters are real and their
relationships meaning and despite being in this really fantastic world, Tari
leads, well, a quite mundane life.

Tari is a Black woman. Her room mate is either bisexual
or a lesbian and in a relationship which has ups and downs but is generally
good; they are not the most prominent but are definitely constant and present.
Her love interest – and top of the class – is also a Black man. We have a
number of ethnicities present among the side characters, the librarians, the
teachers and students.

This book was short – but I think it needs to be. I think
the lack of detailed plot would have become much more frustrating if the book
were longer. This glorious, wonderful, detailed world would have fallen apart
if the book didn’t move at this great pace covering such a large amount of Tori’s
life. Similarly I think the second book in this series is going to have to
throw in a lot of plot now this awesome world has been introduced

But, despite breaking all the rules, I loved this book – and
I can’t wait how this amazing world expands even further and how characters can
explore this excellent originality